Grab Indonesia is quietly introducing its latest function for online health consultation, in partnership with Chinese platform Ping An Good Doctor, KrAsia found Tuesday.
According to a Grab spokesperson, the new feature, called Grab Health, is currently in its beta phase and only available for 10% of Grab’s users. The feature will be released gradually to all users and will be officially launched at the end of the year, possibly in November.
Selected users can now opt to consult with general practitioners for free or having a consultation with medical specialists for IDR 15,000 (USD 1,06) during a 24 hours period. Users can also buy medicines from Grab Health’s pharmacies partners and have them delivered to their preferred location. Moreover, the platform provides various health and wellness-related articles for users’ reference.
The e-healthcare service is one of Grab’s main focuses this year after the firm received an investment commitment of USD 2 billion from Softbank in July, a Grab spokesperson told KrASIA.
Grab announced its plans to foray into the health sector via a joint venture with Ping An Good Doctor since August 2018. It marked Grab’s latest step to becoming a “super app” platform where consumers can have access to different services.
Ping An Good Doctor is China’s biggest online health care platform with more than 300 million registered users. It delivers healthcare solutions using AI technology and employs more than a thousand medical personnel in its in-house medical team and contracts with over 5,000 external doctors. The company, officially known as Ping An Healthcare and Technology, spun off from insurance giant Ping An Insurance Group last year.
Grab Health will face competition from existing health tech platforms like Gojek-backed Halodoc and Alodokter, the two considered biggest players in the Indonesian health tech industry today. The latter recently raised USD 33 million to expand its hospital network integration and to further develop its health insurance service.